In the space of a week, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has railed against elites not once but twice. He is presenting the Żonqor Point investment as a blow against Maltese elites. Then, questioned in Parliament about his choice of Phyllis Muscat to head the CHOGM Task Force, he insinuated that the doubts about her were elitist. You have to give him credit for his chutzpah.

He’s privatising public land, at the expense of ordinary families and farmers, and giving it away for the benefit of an international construction magnate and the globally footloose children of affluent Arabs.

As for the task force head, when she was appointed the official publicity presented her as a successful businesswoman employing dozens of people; hardly someone who needed protection against powerful elites.

It is tempting to see the anti-elitist rhetoric as old-fashioned, something the Prime Minister has resorted to because he has no better arguments. After all, Muscat himself has done his best to get away from the rhetoric of class war that marked Labour a generation ago.

Up till now Muscat has been happy to be seen as on easy, conversant terms with the world of privilege and its creature comforts. Some of his signature policies are based on making his government an enabler of elites – from construction magnates to foreign oligarchs buying passports as insurance against rebellions by their own peasants.

However, I think it would be mistaken to see the anti-elitist rhetoric to be a temporary aberration under pressure. There are several reasons why anti-elitist rhetoric should return, why it will find a ready audience and why, in spite of every irony, it should be Muscat who sells himself as the anti-elitist champion.

The first reason has to do with the global context and the nature of the economy that shapes our lives.

Muscat has said his policies are addressing a new economy.

Actually, they’re addressing the oldest one since the invention of agriculture. He is pushing farmers off the land, privatising public property and fencing it in for an elite.

While he’s not a monarch minting devalued coinage weighing less than the old, he’s selling passports for a song and reducing the weight of citizenship. It’s the closest thing to printing money.

A new economy? It’s more like the old aristocratic regime played out on aglobal stage.

The affluent democracies of the world, with their guaranteed rights, have come to resemble the baronial fortresses of old – at least, their gated communities within their golden miles.

The politically most effective way to combat predatory elites is not to deny the existence of inequality or social classes

Beyond the gates – in the global south – lie the lands they plunder for their rents, and the restless peoples they keep under armed surveillance.

Global elites are set to become a greater part of our lives: invisible, with no ties to our land apart from their private interests, but with increasing influence. Pieces of Malta will be bought up and reshaped the way football teams are.

It’s a recipe for growing resentment by the people who feel they’re losing control over something they think of as belonging to them.

Second, there is also an internal dynamic. Inequality in Malta is growing, as it is elsewhere.

In part it is for reasons that no national government can control on its own. But it also has to do with policies pushed by both major political parties: an endorsement of Scandinavian-level benefits without, however, Scandinavian-level taxes. The cracks are already beginning to show in the system of health and benefits.

But, whatever the reason, the risk of poverty is on the rise and wealth is becoming more concentrated – a stage set for anti-elitist politics.

Other countries have been here before us. What’s important to note is this. The anti-elitist reaction does not just take the form of social movements, like the Occupy movement, Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, which are hostile to all traditional political parties.

It can also take the curious form of the wealthy elite riding and exploiting the rhetoric.

In the US, it is the billionaire Koch brothers who fund the Tea Party movement, which prides itself on being grassroots and anti-elitist but which supports policies that serve the very rich.

In Italy, it was even the country’s wealthiest man, Silvio Berlusconi, who for many years presented himself as the outsider set against the country’s establishment, purportedly speaking up for ordinary people while pursuing his own private interests.

How was it done? By invoking an entity called ‘the people’ and dismissing everything else – monitoring institutions, law courts, serious journalism, and most civil society organisations – as ‘elitist’. The result: the only person left to interpret ‘the people’s will’ ended up being an elite politician.

The politically most effective way to combat predatory elites is not to deny the existence of inequality or social classes. It is to ensure that society is organised so that there is systemic institutionalised solidarity and dialogue between the parts (not charity, which depends on grace and favour).

In the second half of the 20th century, this was the way in which the challenge of social justice was met. Not bydenying class differences and competing interests but by systemically replacing class warfare with institutionalised social dialogue.

The challenge for us is how to adapt this experience to the issue of environmental justice.

We need fair mechanisms that so far have eluded Malta. Until the broad environmentalist movement that is forming is coupled with a workable process of representative dialogue, we all remain vulnerable to the wiles of anti-elitist elitists.

ranierfsadni@europe.com

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